Common cuckoo Cuculus canorus is a charismatic bird species with a dominant presence in human culture: from folklore legends to nowadays there is evidence of cuckoos being a prime candidate as a surrogate of bird diversity. Recent studies demonstrated that the cuckoo can predict hotspots of taxonomic diversity and functional diversity of bird communities in European countries. In this study, we demonstrated that the cuckoo is an excellent bioindicator at multi-spatial scale, extending cuckoo surrogacy from Europe to Asia. Even using three different survey methods (transect, square, point counts), comparing the new findings with results of our research in Europe, sites where the cuckoo is present were characterized by greater species richness, while the cuckoo was absent from sites with low species richness. The goodness of fit of models based on point counts ranged between 71 and 92%. Furthermore, the cuckoo population trend mirrors the average population trend and climate suitability of overall bird communities in Europe. The common cuckoo is therefore a suitable intercontinental bioindicator of hotspots of bird richness, even under climate change scenarios or in areas where the species co-occurs with other cuckoo species, opening a new avenue for standardized citizen science on bird biodiversity surveys worldwide.

Czech University of Life Sciences Prague Faculty of Environmental Sciences Department of Applied Geoinformatics and Spatial Planning Kamýcká 129 CZ 165 00 Prague 6 Czech Republic

Institute of Zoology Poznan University of Life Sciences Wojska Polskiego 71C PL 60 625 Poznań Poland

Laboratoire d'Ecologie Systématique et Evolution CNRS UMR 8079 Université Paris Sud Bâtiment 362 F 91405 Orsay Cedex France

Ministry of Education Key Laboratory for Tropical Plant and Animal Ecology College of Life Sciences Hainan Normal University Haikou 571158 P R China

School of Medicine Faculty of Health and Life Sciences University of Liverpool Whelan Building Brownlow Hill Liverpool L69 3GB UK

Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL Biodiversity and Conservation Biology Zürcherstrasse 111 CH 8903 Birmensdorf Switzerland

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